20 FOOD OF BOBOLINK, BLACKBIRDS, AND GRACKLES. 
of a more or less harmful character, make up the rest of the coleop- 
terous food. Hymenoptera, represented by ants and some wasps, and 
by many of the small parasitic species, form 7.6 percent of the food, 
and were found mostly in May and July stomachs. The bobolink eats 
more of these useful parasitic Hymenoptera than any other bird whose 
food habits have thus far been investigated, although it should be stated 
that examinations of flycatchers and other birds now in course of 
completion indicate that it will soon lose its position at the head of the 
list. Caterpillars are apparently a favorite food. They form 17.6 
percent of the May food, and rise to 28.1 percent in June, after 
which they gradually decrease, averaging in the five months 13 per 
cent. Those eaten are mostly of the species known as cutworms, and 
include the well-known Wephelodes violans. Grasshoppers constitute 
11.5 percent of the food, and are eaten principally in June and July, 
when they amount to 23.2 and 25.8 percent respectively. This is 
unusual. There seems to be a pretty general law that all birds, no 
matter what their food habits may be during the rest of the year, eat 
grasshoppers in August, just as the human race eats certain delicacies 
in their respective seasons. But in August, when with most birds the 
grasshopper season is at its height, the bobolinks begin to drop their 
animal diet and eat vegetable food in preparation for the rice season 
in the South. Besides the insects already mentioned, a few bugs and 
flies are eaten, and also some spiders and myriapods. 
Of the vegetable food, 8.3 percent consists of oats, most of which 
are consumed in August, when they reach 31.4 percent of the whole 
food for the month. Besides oats and rice, little grain is eaten. 
Wheat and barley were found in a few stomachs, and buckwheat in 
one, Corn was not found. Weed seeds, such as barngrass, panic- 
grass, smartweed, and ragweed, are eaten to the extent of 16.2 per- 
cent of the food, and like oats are taken mostly in August, when they 
amount to 86,9 per cent. Various other articles of vegetable food 
go to make up the diet of the bobolinks, while they remain in the 
North, the most important of which is wild rice, which seems to be 
the favorite food during the journey to the rice plantations. This 
plant is as aquatic as its cultivated relative, and abounds along all the 
bays, estuaries, and rivers of the Atlantic coast, where it affords food 
for millions of birds of many species in the latter part of August and 
during September and later. It was originally, no doubt, the princi- 
pal food of the bobolinks at this season, and remained so until the 
advent of civilization introduced something that the birds found even 
more to their taste. Of the two birds taken in the rice fields in May, 
one had eaten 55 percent of insects and 45 percent of rice, with @ 
trace of weed seed, while the other had eaten 50 percent of insects, 
25 percent of rice, and 25 percent of weed seed. Of the insects, 41 
percent in one stomach and 30 in the other were snout-beetles (Rhyn- 
chophora). The remainder were harmful beetles of other kinds and 
